


Miscalculation

by applecup



Series: A Series Of Choices And Actions [5]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: AU, F/M, Quinncident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 08:25:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5701660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applecup/pseuds/applecup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU to Fragmentation chapter 2. Malavai Quinn makes a miscalculation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miscalculation

**Author's Note:**

> I am a terrible person who likes to give everyone happy endings they don't necessarily deserve. This is not that fic.
> 
> I am a terrible person who then likes to ruin those happy endings. This is that fic.

_why don't you tell me what this is really about_

-

He couldn't, though. He tried, and he looked at her, and he looked past her, and he couldn't. He felt himself die inside as he swallowed back the ridiculous, simplistic urge to come clean. He felt the last part of him that had ever once believed he'd be worth anything to anyone wither away as he did what he'd told himself so much that he had to do. He felt the moment slip away, like a raindrop through a cracked paving stone; undetectable, and yet irreversible.

He did not expect the end to be quick, though that did not stop him hoping otherwise.

He was, as he had been in all things, disappointed.

-

'Oh, hey. You're awake.'

Coming to was not something that Malavai Quinn had factored into his plan; coming to in the ship's cargo bay to the sound of _Vette_ of all people left him with the lingering conviction that either hell was a real place, or that his calculations had been even further off than originally anticipated. That just made him think of _her_ , though; the way she'd torn his droids apart, the way she turned on him, the way he'd feared and needed her to end it there and then. Instead, he was here - slumped on the cargo bay floor, cuffed at the wrists to a slat in the wall he could almost certainly have freed himself from, given time (and gone where, exactly?), watching Vette stacking crates against the opposite wall.

( _Where_ , he thought, ridiculously, _were Pierce? And Broonmark? Weren't they better suited to such things?_ )

He didn't say anything, though. What _could_ he say? Given his position- she _must_ have told them, and numbness at his core plummeted ever further at that thought. The crew knew- if not everything then at least the salient details. Eirnhaya - the Lord Wrath - might have been relatively nice for a Sith, but she was still a Sith. A Sith with a Jedi Padawan and a freed Twi'lek slave, but a Sith who'd also happily let a man die a slow and excruciating death by fire as wages for an attempted betrayal. She and Draahg had never exactly been close, either, which was a fact that had haunted Quinn throughout his plans; which was why he'd tried so hard to push her to her angriest, and which was why the longer he remained conscious in her cargo bay, the more he wished he'd had the courage to push her further.

'For the record, and since I probably won't get another chance... this is the dumbest thing you've ever done. You know we were gonna win, right?'

It was impossible to completely ignore Vette, but he tried anyway - closing his eyes and attempting to blot out the sound of her voice (pitched, as always, _just_ right to grate on his nerves), never mind the meaning in her words. She took the hint, at least, snorting to herself, and - after a moment that went on for far too long - leaving him alone.

-

Eirnhaya had been hoping, quietly, desperately, that she wouldn't have to do this.

That he could have had the good manners to die the first time around - that she'd broken something irreparable and untraceable, that he'd die in what passed for sleep and that she wouldn't have to confront him again. That she wouldn't have to look at him, talk to him, listen to him. That she wouldn't have to take her saber and do the one thing any real Sith would have done back on the transponder station. That she could wake up and this would all have magically resolved. That she could sleep.

That her crew would stop _looking_ at her when they thought her back was turned. Examining her - _pitying_ her. She and Malavai - _Quinn_ \- hadn't exactly been subtle about the nature of their relationship, though that was she far more than him. Once, she'd thought it simply another facet of his fastidiousness as an officer - his insistence on a separation between work and pleasure, even if that separation was hinged on a fiction. Now, though, she had come to wonder if there had been other reasons.

Jaesa, of all people, had taken it the hardest. Pierce had never liked Malavai ( _Quinn_ ), and Broonmark was indifferent to the lot of them - he tolerated them as Eirnhaya's allies, but that was as far as it went. Both had sworn that Quinn would pay - and both had deferred to her authority on the matter, albeit Broonmark somewhat more reluctantly than Pierce. Vette had been - shocked? Dismayed? but given the nature of her own contributions to this saga, ultimately unsurprised - but Jaesa, little light side Jedi Padawan Jaesa, had been utterly furious, so much so that it had broken through even Eirn's own heartbroken rage. For one brief, sadistic moment Eirn had considered letting Jaesa unleash that rage on her captive; once it had passed, though, her own affection for the man had taken over and she'd forbidden the Jedi from stepping foot in the cargo hold.

(She'd objected, naturally; drawing her saber and challenging Eirn, more Sith in that moment than she'd ever been - more Sith, in that moment, than her Master, who'd ripped Jaesa's saber from her hands with the Force and ordered her confined to the crew quarters)(and Jaesa, still seething, had finally cooperated, and would have slammed the doors behind her as she'd left if the ship's design had allowed for it)

That she could somehow wind back life several days and try again, find some way it didn't have to end like this. Something to say, something to do. Reload until the optimal solution presents itself. Nobody has to get hurt, here. Nobody has to cry.

-

Her mother had always warned her against loving Sith.

Not always in as many words, and rarely quite as bluntly, but it had been there, right from when she was a child. It had taken her until she was twelve to realise this didn't mean she had to marry an alien, though, until fourteen to realise that she didn't have to _marry_ , and until nineteen to realise that marriage did not have to happen for love.

(Until now to realise it applied not only to Sith, but those who had declared fealties to them, even if those fealties seemed to have fallen by the wayside)

A youth misspent at the theatre had filled her head with silly ideas, though, and ones that a large part of her desperately wanted to indulge. That love was always good and pure, that it always conquered all, that the best interests of the Empire would always win out and that justice was always done. She was the star of her own show, and the galaxy was her stage, but the director - as it turned out - was a fickle bastard, and despite her best performances the audience were rarely grateful.

It was that stupid part of her that had prayed her sister would never be sent to Korriban - and when she had, that she would make it out alive. It was that stupid part of her that had given Malavai this chance at all; that had believed his actions (and inactions) after Quesh had spoken for themselves, that Vette was being paranoid, that all of this worry would be for nothing at all.

It was that same part of her that still wanted to fix this - somehow, _anyhow_ \- that had left him alive in her cargo hold, that the rest of her knew full well was only setting her up for further disappointment - further heartbreak, further humiliation.

She'd thought once that nobody could top the wounds the Dread Masters had inflicted on her. Apparently, she'd been wrong.

-

Quinn didn't look up when the cargo bay doors opened again; part of him assumed it would be Vette, returning to talk at him, or to mess with the crates. It immediately became clear though that he was wrong - it was Eirnhaya (the Lord Wrath), her expression hard and her posture tightly wound - and Pierce, armed and seething and, if Quinn had to guess, accompanying her mostly to watch the show.

He wasn't even looking at them, and had to look away. It was unbearable. _He_ was unbearable.

She did not approach, for which he was grateful; Pierce did, for which he was not. He braced himself for the hit, first unconsciously and then, at the Lieutenant's darkly amused laugh, entirely consciously, but nothing came.

'Just give me an excuse, _Captain_.'

Pierce's voice rumbled, like a storm; like an earthquake, like a distant explosion. Quinn might have been blind to the Force, but he could still _feel_ the other man's hatred and contempt. He and Pierce had never gotten along, no, but this was different - personal on far too close a level. Pierce was black ops, too - the dirtiest of the Empire's dirty fighters, and Quinn had never doubted for a moment that what Pierce lacked in subtlety and finesse he could more than make up for in pain.

No excuse was given, though, and - after far too long - Pierce stepped back, cuffs in hand, letting Quinn breathe, again - letting him stand, far too slowly and _far_ too awkwardly. He risked a glance at her - just for a moment, just for long enough to see the anger and regret in her expression that forced him to look away again in shame. Her saber was present, as it always was, but it was the holocommunicator in her hands that made him wonder - that blotted his mind with worry, that blanked out the part of him that wanted to remain mute and let the start of a half-formed sentence fragment bubble up from somewhere deep within him.

'M-

He hadn't even got past the first syllable when she struck him, the full force of her anger and hate and humiliation balled up into the Force and sending him reeling. The skin of his cheek stung, as though slapped; every other sense he had screamed, and - just for a moment - the world span.

_Kneel._

His body obeyed before his mind even registered the word, and he was immediately uncertain she'd even spoken. There was no protest, though, as he dropped to one knee

_Lower._

both knees, relieved in truth that he no longer had to look at either of them. Pierce found it funny enough to chuckle, darkly; Quinn felt a fresh wave of humiliation roll over him that evaporated as his Lord Wrath finally spoke.

'Vette,' she said, 'is, along with all her other qualities, a highly talented slicer. If you'd ever bothered to look past your prejudices, you might have seen this yourself.'

He thought, ridiculously, of the arguments they'd had about the girl; his exasperation at her antics, and Eirn's childish indulgences of the same, and the bizarre irrelevance of any skills Vette might have had to the situation at hand. Vette was outspoken and irreverent and disrespectful (and a part of him had always envied the freedom the Twi'lek afforded herself, even if he would never admit it) but he didn't understand what any of that had to do with-

_My Lord._

His voice. It sounded strange; it always did, to hear one's own voice played back. The poor acoustics of the cargo hold didn't help - or the equally poor speakers of Eir's holo.

_Captain Quinn. I believe that some congratulations are overdue._

The numb, tense, knot in Quinn's stomach finally blossomed into cold nausea as he recognised the voice - as he recognised the conversation. Baras - the man who'd pulled him out of a court martial and into a dead-end desk job on a backwater hellhole, and not only expected him to be thankful for it but actually demanded some measure of loyalty from someone he'd tried several times now to have killed. The worst of it was that he got it, too, though not out of any form of love. Quinn had long come to loathe Baras; he was everything wrong with the Sith, as petty and as small minded as every other of the Empire's masters. What differentiated Baras was not any personal quality, but the simple fact that he held not just Quinn's career but his very _life_ in his hands - and, more to the point, were Quinn to fuck up, he could be easily replaced. His finding an alternate sponsor, on the other hand, was endlessly less likely; they'd have to be someone not averse to taking on Baras, and those were few and far between - something that Eirnhaya had found out first hand.

She, though, was a Sith, in every sense of the word, and had her own power - her own pull within the Empire, her own worth in saving. He, for all his achievements, was nothing in comparison.

(She, he'd realised then and re-remembered now, was one such potential sponsor; powerful, and with her own bone to pick with the older Sith) (but it was a gamble, and a dangerous one; if she failed, those who'd tried alongside her would be punished just as much) (and he, having betrayed his former master, so much more than the others) (and while he wanted to believe with every fibre of his being that she would be the victor, some part of him had kept on nagging _what if_ )

She played the whole thing, too; not that she needed to, not that he hadn't gone over it word for word in his own mind seemingly innumerate times since he'd had it. He felt sick.

'This conversation was logged when you had it, over a month ago.' Her voice, he realised, was strained, more so than it had ever been. 'Vette decrypted it for me this morning, at my request.'

So much for his secrecy. She'd known all along - her and that fucking Twi'lek, and this- all of this- even if they hadn't known the details, he realised, she must have guessed what was going on, and still she went with him, still she trusted him (had wanted to trust him), still she-

_why don't you tell me what this is really about_

gave him chance after chance to come clean, to admit everything, and he'd been too much of a fucking coward to beg her for the help that she was still freely offering, even after all this. Help that part of him desperately wanted to cling to; help that the rest of him knew that he didn't deserve.

The moment dragged on, silent save for the hum of the ship's engines, the distant rattle of the environmental controls, the barely audible buzz of the lighting, the too-loud beat of his own heart. She'd known everything, and she'd still given him a chance, and he'd still thrown it away. A kinder, gentler Master than Baras had ever been or would be, even leaving aside the intimacies of their relationship.

'If you have anything to say, Captain, now would be the time.'

Her voice cracked as she spoke his rank - a rank he had, he thought, ridiculously, because of her. He remembered the way she smiled when he'd been promoted - warm and happy, and- proud, even. She'd pointed out, some time later, that Broysc alone would never have been able to block a promotion that Baras had _wanted_ ; he'd felt rather stupid, at the time, for never having realised that himself.

There were no words now, though - none that didn't instantly die in his throat, none that he felt were worth speaking, none that he felt he had any right to speak. She'd been right rebuke his earlier attempt; he had long surrendered any right he had to justify himself. He was utterly unjustifiable.

'With respect, m'lord,' Pierce rumbled, 'I think the Captain has said more than enough already.'

She said nothing further to that, not with words; he didn't argue that, not even to himself.

The last thing he heard was her saber igniting; he closed his eyes, not wanting the last thing he saw to be her cargo bay floor, and tried to think of better times.

He failed.

-

She'd wanted him to beg; she'd wanted him to plead, she'd wanted him to argue and to justify and to explain - to do something, _anything_ , and all he'd done was-

'M'lord?'

-kneel, and Eirn could feel her throat tightening and her heart racing as the world retained its distant, unreal quality. Her head throbbed, and her eyes stung, and her voice, as she spoke, cracked and wavered even more than it already had. It was taking all of her willpower to remain upright, and required more than she'd ever had to remain composed.

'You have your orders.'

His head was to be sent to Baras, as a message; the rest of him could be disposed of through the airlock. His belongings - most of them, anyway - were already packed into crates, ready to be disposed of at a moment's notice. An unkind plan, formed in an unkind moment by a heart that no matter how she tried refused to harden. She was failing, she was slowly coming to realise, as a Sith; she was falling, alone, and had been for a lifetime.

'M'lord.'

There was nothing left here for her to do, though; nothing left, but to make the million mile journey to her quarters, alone, to lock the door behind her, to cling to the pillow from his side of the bed (which still smelled of him - of _them_ , of all that had and could have been), and to sob until the stars went out.


End file.
